The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

A most persistent spam

I'm wondering what's up with this spam?

From
Aleksandr <info@s9.mirengo.ru>
To
info@conman.org
Subject
Предложение
Date
Tue, 20 Jul 2021 22:39:01 +0000

Здравствуйте. Вас интересует продвижение сайта? Напишите мне в Skype пожалуйста WhatsApp/Viber владельца сайта и передайте мое предложение. Мой Skype для быстрой связи: mayboroda_aleks Преимущества при сотрудничестве со мной:

Я предоставляю отчетность, какие и где были куплены ссылки на Ваш сайт, какие есть ошибки на сайте, которые нужно исправить, увидеть реальный рост позиций сайта и многое другое. С уважением, Aleksandr, SEO специалист в области продвижения сайтов. Мой Skype для быстрой связи: mayboroda_aleks

I mean, yes, it's spam. It's in Russian. And I've been receiving this exact email for well over a year now. Usually two or three times a week. I tried rejecting it via the IP address (via my greylisting daemon) but to no avail—the source IP changes too often. I'd reject the domain, but that changes constantly too. The name? Always “Aleksandr.” The subject line? Always “Предложение.” Yes, I could just automatically delete the email upon receiving it, but I'd much rather reject it as soon as possible rather than accepting it to then just delete it.

But all that aside, I can't figure out the angle here. Is Aleksandr really that hard up for work that he'll spam anybody for work? (yes, I ran the email through Google Translate) Even people who don't speak Russian? Or is this a smear campaign against Aleksandr? Trying to drive him (her?) out of business? I can't tell.

There's no virus in the email. And even though there's an HTML version of the message included, there are no malicious links, as there are no links.

So I'm at a complete loss as to the game going on here.

Update on Wednesday, Debtember 22ND, 2021

Wisdom of the AncientsI did find a solution, but it might not be one you can use.

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